What the Caterpillar Calls the End of the World, the Master Calls a Butterfly

In the last day I have discovered the beauty and wonder of knee braces. Remember last week when I had my knees x-rayed? (I'm sure you do, because I know that all of my Imaginary Readers are nothing if not faithful.) Well, it turns out I have bone spurs which are compressing the nerves in my knees and causing the burning sensation. Anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen help, but adding some moderately firm knee braces when I am walking has made a huge difference. My wife tells me they also make me look hardcore, so that's cool too. So this morning I took my first spin on the Time Treadmill with braces on, and finished up watching The Mutants.

The crux of this entire story is that the natives of Solos, unbeknownst even to themselves, have a metamorphosing lifecycle to match the planet's unique 2,000 year orbit and 500 year seasons. The aggressive and unethical experimentation by the Earth scientist (who, in a bit of on-the-nose casting, is of German descent) has changed the planet's atmospheric conditions in such a way that the secondary stage of the metamorphosis is being triggered earlier than it should and in an incomplete fashion. In that sense, the story also serves as a Global Climate Change allegory as well although that was certainly not the hot-button issue in 1972 that it is today. So the first stage is a basically humanoid life form, the second stage are six foot tall insectoid creatures, and at the climax of the story we discover that the final stage is a transcendent and ephemeral god-like being that is able to float through walls and disintegrate enemies with a mere thought. As an allegory it works well, even if the actual science and biology of the concept is bollox.

Overall I liked the story quite a bit, certainly much more than the previous one. If the science was a bit wobbly, it certainly didn't interfere with the story. And at least for this one there really was enough story to justify having six parts, so that was nice.

Tomorrow I dive into The Time Monster, which has a couple of interesting "firsts" as well as (I think) the third explanation for the destruction of Atlantis. So that should be fun.